Virgin cash fight over line shutdown

SIR Richard Branson's Virgin Trains is heading for a huge compensation battle with Railtrack over plans to shut parts of the London-to-Glasgow main line for nearly nine months.

Railtrack has insisted that Virgin Trains will be 'hardly affected' by the two 17-week closures in 2003 and 2004 on the line near Manchester, but Virgin said last night it intends to file a substantial compensation claim once it has added up the cost of all the delays. 'There will be a considerable bill,' a spokesman said. 'Stoke-on-Trent is one of our main stations in The Potteries and there will be no service for 17 weeks.'

Railtrack would also receive a big bill from Virgin Trains for the closure of the line between Milton Keynes and Hemel Hempstead for 16 weekends until December, he added. 'If compensation is high for a line closed just at weekends, you can be sure there will be a huge bill for disruptions throughout the week.'

But RaiItrack said that only First North Western, which runs commuter services from Stoke-on-Trent to Manchester, would be badly affected. Compensation for disruption there would be only about £1m or £2m, a source indicated. It is estimated that train operators affected by the Milton Keynes weekend closures will be entitled to combined compensation of about £50m.

The Virgin bill, which will not be presented for at least two years, will be another in a series of payments made by Railtrack and the Strategic Rail Authority to Virgin for the bungled upgrade of the west coast main line route.

Virgin has already had £90m from Railtrack. It also recently won another £100m compensation because of delays on the line caused by building works.

Virgin had planned to run high-speed tilting trains a year ago, but because of the delays Branson's trains will not be allowed to run at 140mph or use their tilting mechanism for a year.